Potpourri Week! and J. Geils Band

Potpourri: meaning medley or miscellaneous collection. Like the Jeopardy! category, not the dried flowers.

Occasionally I'll come up with something to write about that doesn't really lend itself to an entire entry: enter potpourri week. These are some (unrelated and in no particular order) miscellaneous favorite things.

Thunderstorms- When I was little my family lived in a house with a great front porch. It had a swing, a brick ledge that went around and was a great place to watch thunderstorms.

I distinctly remember sitting on the porch one night with my family watching the lightning from a particularly exciting thunderstorm thinking this must be what it looks like if you were inside an egg when it was cracked. I’m sure my love of watching storms came from my Dad. One time, while the tornado sirens were going off, my Dad was outside looking for the tornado while I was inside, duck-and-covered in an interior closet, (like you are supposed to be if you don’t have a basement) because he wouldn’t let me go outside too. If I was better at advanced math I might have majored in meteorology. Of course, then my friends and family would have had to deal with me shouting out weather patters rather than rock formations in the car. I’m not sure which is worse.

Avocados- When I was in high school there was a rumor going around that our mascot, the warriors, was going to be changed. To the fighting avocados. Seriously. And it was semi-believable because Fallbrook is the avocado capital of the United States and former avocado capital of the world.

My appetite for avocados is a new one. They are kind of a weird texture (some say it’s the same as butter) and don’t have a ton of flavor on their own. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, because I’ll put them on just about anything.

Newspapers- I’m sort of contrary when it comes to newfangled business. I still would prefer a letter to an email I refuse to use any sort of e-reader contraption, I don’t want my phone to be able to tell me where the nearest Starbucks is, and I like reading the newspaper. Not Wall Street Journal Online, not Anchorage Daily News’ AND.com, the actual printed copy of the newspaper. I like flipping through the sections, I like getting ink on my fingers, I like doing the crossword puzzle, I like feeling like a dad in a 1960s television show. My perfect morning would involve a sunny, warm porch, a cup of coffee, and the newspaper. Pure heaven.

Chocolate Milk- There’s a little restaurant in Metamora, IL, where my grandparents live, called the Family Fountain. It’s a typical small town café. There are unofficial men and women tables, (men generally talk farming, women talk knitting/crocheting/other crafts), they serve biscuits and gravy, pie and other comfort foods, and everyone always orders the same thing. I order 1 pancake (which is the size of a dinner plate) and chocolate milk. No fancy pre-mixed chocolate milk here. It’s regular milk with Hershey’s syrup and you have to stir it in yourself. And it’s my favorite part of breakfast.

This week's hot jam is Centerfold by the J. Geils Band. Centerfold was the band's only big hit, but it was a big one. It hit number 1 on the Hot 100 in 1982 and was a regular video in the early years of MTV. For some reason, the oldies station my alarm is set to often plays this song in the morning, and I catch myself sleepily humming along. (Not that I'm complaining, it's not a bad way to wake up.) Centerfold tells the story of a boy surprised to find his high school crush in a "girly magazine". That has to happen in real life. I mean someone sat next to Pamela Anderson in history, right?